Second Screening

The defenition of second screening is when you would use a tablet/ phone along side the use of the television. This is used for engaging people in the occassion of event TV. This is when people tune in to a program when it is broadcasted, this second screening feature would not be available if you do not tune in to the program of film when it is being broadcasted.
Another way in which second screening can be used is along side the consoles for gaming. This is a feature that is being used with consoles such as the wiiU but will be used a lot in future gaming.
The main advantage of this would be that it makes interactivity among medias and may be a way of stopping piracy

Kickstarter and Twitter Music App

Zach Braff has started a kickstarter appeal for the funding of another film directed by him. This is a good use of crowd sourcing so help fund the prodcution of a film which could potentially not work. This is more benefitial for the producers because its not their money, so they have nothing too loose. When you give money to appeals, you can get special rewards for doing so. For example this would be 'getting to name a character' or 'be a cast member'. Both of these are worth a lot of money, but would be an incentive for people to give this amount.

The Twitter Music application has the same kind of features as Spotify where the user will be able to search for a band and listen to them. This is also combined with such Twitter features such as sharing with friends through re-tweets and favourites. This provides a more social media in the music industry. However this may not be completely successful because of some similar ideas before this one such as iTunes' "Ping" which has not done so well. This suggests that people do not see a need for this style of media.

Preliminary Task and Final Product Analysis

In the first picture the quality is lacking an awful lot and the proffessional look about it is almost none existant. The downsides to this piece of work would be firstly the dull and plan look to the text on it. This is a bad feature because having a boring font will not attract an audience to therefore would hardly be read by a lot of people. Another bad feature about this would be the effect on the bottom picture. This effect is completely un-needed and would not be usually seen on a newsletter.

Some features that actually work on this would be the colour scheme. The reason why this is good is because these colours are associated with the school, so therefore there is a reason for them being there. Another feature would be the school logo in the top right hand corner. This is an expected feature on newsletters because the logo usually represents the school and seeing it the audience associates it with the school.  Another feature would be some of the phrases on the piece. The reason why I say this is because most newsletter will want to display some content without giving too much away and I believe that having open ended sentances such as “new block builds futures” and “read all this inside..” does this efficiently for a school newsletter.

In the picture below some features that you can tell are suited for a magazine would be the issue number, barcode, website and price. These would not be needed on a school newsletter but In this certain media they would not be proffessional if they werent on there. Aswell as these I have also added another couple of features that I expected to see on the front of a media piece such as this. These would be the “Free Posters” part to try and persuade the audience to buy the magazine and also the “special interview with fergs” part. This would hopefully attract people who would want to find out more about this interview so by displaying that it would be featured inside, it would hopefully attract a certain audience to buy it. Another part of this magainze would be putting the ‘Download’ logo on the front. This would make people who are familiar with the festival, want to know what the magazine had to say about it.

A feature about the picture below that I would point out that could be done better on a more proffessional product, would be the font. The reason why I have point this out would be because the font doesn’t suit the title as much as it could. A way to improve this would be to make the font in a simlar colour or have it in the same font as the title. This would keep a sutiable house style throughout the product. Although different fonts would be good to have I feel that the font used isnt as suitable for the style of magazine it is.

The role of Napster in 2001 & the role of iTunes

Napster was originally founder in 1999 as a peer to pee service where the share audio files. This is unique because it revolutionized the idea of sharing files over the internet for free. The response from the consumers would be that the could now get their music for free so it would have been popular and appealing due to the fact that it man all be done from your home. At the time that this website was created the laws on copyright would not have been as strict so therefore people would not have known many of the consequences of thia illegal act. Nowadays the law has been enforced enough for people to know what can happen. An example if this would be when Metallica sued Napster for $10 million($100,000 for each song) which was more than likely what made Napster eradicate illegal downloads. The ways that piracy affected the artists would be the massive loss of profits for them through CD sales. Saying this in 2012 sales in music had risen by 0.3%. This would be by having new ways of distributing music legally such as streaming through services such as Spotify. 

iTunes was introduced on January 9th 2001. The services that iTunes offered was that you could download either full albums or individual songs completely legally. In later years the ability to download and own books, films and podcasts. A new feature that iTunes has incorporated would be the musical social networking 'Ping'. This allows for a more social interactive aspect so a piece of software thay was originally a media player. The way that iTunes has changed music would be by being able to distribute music in a more convenient manner from the comfort of their home. This had lead to the death of highstreet music stores such as HMV.

Streaming Media

Streaming means watching a video or listening to music over the Internet in real time instead of downloading the file onto their computer. This is done by 'buffering' which means loading the file ahead of the point that you are up to so it is seemingly playing all the way through without downloads. This has mainly taken off when broadband came into use and Internet speeds became quick enough to handle this constant stream of data over the Internet.

Fork many companies this is the new way of distributing content to the public for such businesses as Netflix and Spotify. This service relies on in Internet connection to be constant which is only taken off in the last decade. For some businesses like Blockbuster, this new way of distributing was bad news because they did not join in quick enough an now they have been shut down because people like the idea of a cheaper, more suitable method of acquiring their content.

As well as these businesses taking advantage of this new streaming technology, there have also been others who have utilised this feature very well such as YouTube. This website is now the largest website for user created content and is still rapidly growing. This site has now incorporated such things as 'live streaming' where users will upload to this site in real time and users will be able to see the video as it is being created. This is now being put into new technologies such as the PlayStation 4 which is supposedly meant to have a feature where the users will be able to upload their game footage straight to 'uStream'. Another website that has the largest amount of live streaming content would be 'twitch'.

Music Industry and Online Piracy

http://www.thecmuwebsite.com/article/record-industry-sees-slight-growth-for-first-time-since-napster/ 
This article outlines the fact that since the start of the piracy craze, which started when the software 'Napster' was created in 1999, music sales have been very low and artists have not made as much money as they used to prior to this. As of last years sales in music, the record industry has seen a slight growth in sales (0.3% higher than 2011). This may not seem like a large amount but if this continues, this whole piracy situation for the music industry may possibly become eradicated.
Some reasons for this sudden change in sales could be due to the more digital way of distributing content to the audience. Digital distribution is without doubt the near future of most purchases so therefore giving people the option to get a virtual copy of the product legally, and most of the time cheaper through micro-transactions, can sway some of the people who acquire the content illegally.
Saying this people nowadays don't always have to buy the music, there has been recent programs such as 'Spotify' which enable the user to simply pay for the right to listen to a large database of songs. This is a much preferred option for some people as they pay a monthly subscription to listen to as much music as they want, completely legal.
Another way in which the music industry has seen profit would be through the advert service on websites such as 'YouTube'. On this website there are channels such as 'Vevo' which host musical content, but by placing advertisements before these music videos they acquire money which would be a similar concept to the act of someone buying the bands music.

http://theweek.com/article/index/240718/the-anti-piracy-copyright-alert-system-is-the-napster-era-finally-dead
In this article it talks about the new idea of the 'Six Strikes Copyright Alert System' and how it may be a solution to this new era of pirating content. In my opinion there can be as much punishment for online piracy as the government wants but if the content is there it will not stop people getting through the blocks in which the law have put in place. For example when internet providers banned their customers from accessing 'ThePirateBay' the creators of the website simply changed their website name and added proxies to make it harder for the law to track what people were doing. In my opinion the only way to make piracy undesirable would be to offer the product with more advantages for acquiring it legally. I do not think that punishing people for wanting free things at the comfort of their own home is fair at all, and if the problem for the companies producing the content is that their product is not making enough money, then they have not attracted the audience to want to 'own' it properly, and they would need to come up with new marketing techniques.

Music Industry before the Internet

The music industry before the up-rise in internet use, which would be around the time of 1996 onwards, was a much more successful  industry to be in back in the days prior to the internet. The reason why I say this is mainly because the generations that are here today are getting used to not having to pay for the music that is being put out there due to the easy access of pirated copies. This is making the music industry very hard to become wealthy in.
Going back to the beginning when music was first being used as a job in the entertainment business, people would gather to see the artist perform live. Back at this time the music would have been very orchestra based and people would then purchase the music they had seen in the form of musical notation for them to play in their own time. This evolved when the Gramophone came into use around 1877. This changed the way people listened to music and was revolutionary in the fact that people were now able to hear artist play their own pieces without going to see them in concert. This method of listening to music was around for a long time and advanced very slowly because the use of vinyl's to put the music onto was only upgraded in about the 1990's. This was around the time when CD's came into use and provided the public with a more 'compact' version of the vinyl aspect.
Soon after the creation of CD's there was then the product of portable CD players such as 'Walkman'. These revolutionised music because people where now able to listen to their music wherever they wanted as long as they had a CD to play and a Walkman to play it on.
Around the time of the 1980's this was when digital recording methods were replaced with digital recording. The benefits of this were that the recorded tracks sounded a lot smoother, and without the small buzz which used to happen with analogue. They were also a lot easier to change if mistakes were made in the recording, which beforehand the artist would have to play everything perfectly how they wanted it to be heard. In essence this style of recording took more talent but also possible more time to get it completely right. As well as these benefits the producers then has a choice of digital effects to put into the songs which made it a lot easier to make new sounds and creativity among new pieces.  
The internet has also played a strong part in advertising for bands. Before the internet the bands would have had to rely on word of mouth, or if people heard them get played on the radio. This was really the only way of getting to know more bands because there was no alternative method of distributing the bands music to the masses.

How has the internet changed TV?

The service of Netflix has completely changed the way people now watch TV series' and films. The way they do this is by providing a streamable copy of the product to be watch from multiple devices for a monthly subscription. Because of the mass use of the service now, they have been able to finanse their own shows to be exclusively shown on only their service.When Netflix was first created they did not distribute their products through online streaming, instead they sent out physical copies of the films they had to offer. This is similar to the current business/ competitor 'Lovefilm' who offer physical copies and also 'streamable' copies. Netlix charge £6 a month for their service and this price is very affordable for most people and is very attractive for people who watch a lot of television. This is partly why this business has took off so much in recent years, it is also possibly why they have made some film businesses such as Blockbuster go out of business in recent times due to the fact that they lack the online distribution service which many people now use instead of going to shops to buy DVD's. The fact that this service is so cheap means that more people are likely to pay for it therefore their overall profit would be larger than if they charged large amounts. Because of the high success of this business they have been able to finance their own tv series to be shown exclusively on Netflix. This technique is slowly going to take over the film industry if this continues to grow.
The series House of Cards is the most watched TV programme on Netflix. This show is also completely funded by Netflix and is available in complete series sets for the people who pay the monthly subscription for the Netflix service. House of Cards is a exclusive series for Netflix and is not shown in any other service. This has changed TV simply by giving the audience the series in its entirety, the users are more likely to watch multiple episodes at a time. This is different because before internet distribution, when series' got shown on the television, they usually showed one episode a week. This meant that the user could not watch more than one episode at a time unless they were to catch up on episodes they have watched.
This way of distribuing TV programs to the customers has changed the way people watch series' and films because it is now more accessable for the general public to view their favourite shows or films. The reason why I say this is because you can use the service of Netflix on multiple devices which is also known as convergence. By putting their service on multiple devices it meets the needs for more customers which means more people are likely to pay for the service. Some examples of devices they provide the service for would be PC's, Tablets, Xbox 360's, PS3's and iPads/iPhones.

Tim Berners-Lee and Web 2.0

Firstly the term Web 2.0 describes the new ways of people communicating on the internet and the newly added features that make the internet more of an interactive and socal place for people to be.

Tim's view on this new term 'Web 2.0' is that the web was orgininally made for the purpose that people are now saying that Web 2.0 is. This would obviously annoy Tim because this was his initial vision when making the internet. His view on the current internet is that he is big on wiki's and blogs but he thinks that there is no cohesion in the term Web 2.0 because it is the same as Web 1.0.

Interview information found on this website.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2006/09/7650/

Film Industry and the Internet

Django Unchained (2013)

Can it be downloaded? Where from?
Because of the high popularity of this film, this means that more people all over the world would want to see it and most people do not like to pay the high cost of the cinema. This means that the film is all over the internet on torrent sites for users to download and own illegally. Becuase when the film first came out it was not through the production stage of making the DVD's to be sold, therefore most of the versions of the film were screeners and where uploaded by someone who had an early copy of the film.
How many screens has it been shown on?

Is it being shown in print or digital?

What impact do audience produced films have?

What type of films are shown on user generated sites?

Are audiences remxing film trailers? Why?

Conclusion: Review material and make a list of key issues and developments. What impact has the Internet had on the film industry?

Dave G on Web 2.0

David Gauntlett's opinion on web 2.0 is that it allows a faster, more collaborative creativity on the web. He says that web 2.0 is "harnessing collective inteligence" and media 2.0 is a term that describes the changing focus of media on the web. To be continued....

Obama's Digital Fundraising

The way Obama expected to aquire more than one billion throuhh this campaign would be through using small dollar fundraising through the means of email, social media, mobile and the website. In total Obama raised about $690 million digitally in 2012 and about $500 million in 2008.
The main way in which Obama managed to gain more money was by a large number of small transactions rather than fewer large amounts of money. This was more appealing to more people because a larger number of people would be happy giving away a small donation therefore he got millions of people supporting him as opposed to his competitor who relied on the richer people to make large donations which did not appeal to many people because large investments which potentially have no change of returning back to them would not be worth their time or money.

Wikinomics

This term 'Wikinomics' was created by Williams and Tapscott to describe the effectiveness of user collaboration on websites (also known as wiki's) to achieve a far better standard of information on a topic. The largest example of this today would be Wikipedia. This would be classed as a wiki because users can add or remove information on any of the pages provided by this site and there is also links to other pages on this website. Therefore growing the amount of research hosted by the site more and more each day.
The four main principles of this Wikinomics theory would be:

• Peering. This is said to replace the hierarchical form of use among the majority of websites these days and provides the wiki's with a more collaborative approach to this new concept. 
• Ideagloras. This represents a place on the internet where a large group of people or businesses go to exchange information amongst each other. 
• Prosumers. This new word was created to describe the usual consumers of information becoming producers of it aswell through the means of social networking. An example of this would be through the website 'Twitter'. This is a perfect example because anyone can post up any news you like and it can easily be shared or viewed by thousands of people. 
• Globalization. This means that there is no geographical limit as to where you can view wiki's as long as you have an internet connection and a device to let you access it. This means that wiki's can be updated by almost anyone therefore acquiring a greater and possibly more accurate piece of information.  

ASA

The Advertising Standards Authority is the United Kingdoms independent regulator of advertising across all media. They specialise in the areas of complaints about adverts seen or heard and the checking of advertisements to ensure that the material is not misleading, harmful or offensive to the audience. If it is this company may take action against this material.

BlockBuster and HMV into administration

Both of these shops have been in the news recently due to their low income as of new technology, forcing these businesses to close down. The main reason why these business have had to do this is because of other new businesses providing a more suitable and quick, possibly even cheaper service.
For example in terms of BlockBuster, this shop used to be the only place where you could watch a movie without actually buying the disk, and this was a much more preferred option for most people because they wouldn't want their homes filled with DVD's. This however was where the internet came in because this allowed people to communicate and share files over the internet without any sort of strong regulation. This meant that when businesses moved onto the internet to provide a similar service to BlockBuster's, it was quicker and easier for people to do without leaving their house to rent a movie. Businesses that have made use of the internet for this reason would be Netflix and LoveFilm. Because both of these businesses have been in the internet game for a long time now, BlockBuster would have a hard time competing with these top dogs, therefore having no choice but to close their stores.
This is also apparent for HMV because music is now so easily available over the internet and having virtual copies of songs instead of racks of CD's is now more efficient and suits alot of people these days. Therefore a similar effect as to what happened with BlockBuster is now happening to HMV because its competitors who have been doing the online trade business for a while now would be businesses such as iTunes and Amazon to name a couple.
These reasons for both businesses are only the legal implications, there is also pirating which has to be taken into account because both music and films can both be easily acquired for free which would also be seen as a problem for the newer businesses trading over the internet, but they have a much better chance of keeping up with this than those who do not provide this service.

OFCOM Regulation

OFCOM which is formally known as 'The Office of Communications' handles the regulation for broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries in the United Kingdom. This government approved corporation mainly works in the protection of material which could be either harmful or offensive to the public and could ban this material from being shown. Another one of OFCOM's aims is to represent citizens and consumers by promoting competition.

Amazon and Play in the news

Amazon offers free MP3's to CD buyers.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/amazon/9793647/Amazon-offers-free-MP3s-to-CD-buyers.html

Amazon are offering free MP3's of the CD's they have bought going back to 1998. This includes more than 50,000 CD's from Sony, Warner and many other independant labels. This service is only available in the US at the moment but is hoping to be available in the UK at the end of 2013.

Play.com closes direct retail service.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-20953357

Play are moving out of the direct retail business intending to become a marketplace on from march 2013. In a statement Play.com said: "Moving forward we are intending to focus exclusively on our successful marketplace, which is our main business area, and to phase out the direct-retail part of our business."

The Long Tail Theory

This theory is giving people more unpopular content through the means of the internet because you can afford to either stock more of less wanted items in warehouses, or because the content is virtually there to download and own. This can apply to many different medias such as Films. The way in which the long tail theory can apply here is that you will be able to either find either independant or old films on a website to order and own a copy of, or simly just either stream the film or download a copy. This means that the internet has made the more unpopular products more available to the few people who want them. This was unlike times before the internet were you would rely on the local shop to stock the item in which you want, and the chances of them having a item which wasnt wanted by a lot of people is slim, so the internet provides more availability.
Another example of a media which can use this theory would be music. This is the same again because now because of the internet you can order albums off a website or you could stream or download them. This means that the company's who stock the item can afford to expand their product range into the niche market. By giving people more products to choose from and having a diverse range of items, company's are benefiting from this new method of distribution because it allows them to hit many different target audiences and still aquire their custom.

Graph showing the 'Long Tail' in terms of sales.

Internet Memes

An Internet Meme is an idea, usually in the form of a image, which is virally sent around the internet through the means of forums and social networking sites etc. Memes are not just images however, they can also be videos or even just words or phrases that have became a phenomenon over the internet. An example of an Internet Meme in the form of an image is shown on the right.